Accelerated aging methodologies for evaluating physiological potential of treated soybean seeds

Abstract: This work evaluated the efficiency of accelerated aging test to determine the physiological potential in treated soybean seeds with fungicides and insecticides, in addition to analyzing the concordance between the results obtained by different accelerated aging methods with the actual results of the physiological quality in seeds after the storage. The study was divided into two experiments, both with entirely randomized delineation, with four replications. In the first experiment, seed germination was evaluated after imposing some treatments that were arranged in a 3 x 2 x 3 factorial scheme: seed treatment (imidacloprid + thiodicarb; fipronil + thiophanate methyl + pyraclostrobin; no treatment); vigor levels (high; low); and accelerated aging (traditional; saturated NaCl solution; no aging). In the second experiment, seedling emergence was evaluated after applying some treatments that were arranged in a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial scheme: seed treatment (imidacloprid + thiodicarb; fipronil + thiophanate methyl + pyraclostrobin; no treatment); vigor levels (high; low); storage time (0 and 135 days). The accelerated aging methods were efficient to determine the physiological potential of the seeds, in which, the NaCl method presented better results. The physiological potential of soybean seeds decreased throughout storage and the application of chemicals in seed treatment impaired the germination and emergence percentages, regardless of the active ingredient used. The accelerated aging method with NaCl presents greater agreement with the actual storage results.